There will be a showdown today in an unlikely place: the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Syracuse. And there will be priests on both sides.

Inside the cathedral, Bishop Robert J. Cunningham of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Syracuse will give a homily in which he compares the church’s fight against providing health care coverage for contraception to the struggles of martyrs who died for religious freedom.

At the same time, another group of Central New York Catholics — including at least one priest — will pray outside the Cathedral. That group hopes the Catholic Church will step back from its hard line on birth control and confront what the group says are more important issues: poverty and access to health care.

The 12:10 p.m. Mass at the cathedral today is part of a nationwide campaign by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops to get attention and support for its fight against President Obama’s health care policy. The two-week period, which falls during the celebrations of several saints whose heads were cut off because of their quests for religious freedom, is being called “Fortnight for Freedom” and includes events at several parishes.

“It’s really a period of prayer that religious liberty will be respected for all people,” Cunningham said.

At first, the federal health-insurance plan exempted churches and other houses of worship from the mandate to provide health-care coverage for birth control, but it did not extend the exemption to other religiously affiliated employers like Catholic hospitals.

When the bishops objected, the Obama administration offered a compromise: Health insurance companies would provide the coverage for religiously affiliated employers.

U.S. bishops rejected the compromise in February, saying it didn’t address their moral concerns about birth control.

More than 40 Catholic dioceses, including New York’s, filed lawsuits in federal court against the Obama administration, saying the compromise threatened their religious freedom.

The lawsuits and “Fortnight for Freedom” campaign come at a time when the bishops also have cracked down on the work of thousands of nuns who belong to the Leadership Council of Women Religious, saying they’ve been too outspoken on social issues, including their support of the Obama health care plan.

“Our liturgical calendar celebrates a series of great martyrs who remained faithful in the face of persecution by political power—St. John Fisher and St. Thomas More, St. John the Baptist, (Saints) Peter and Paul, and the First Martyrs of the Church of Rome ...,” Cunningham wrote.

“James Madison, often called the Father of the Constitution, described conscience as ‘the most sacred of all property.’ He wrote that ‘the Religion then of every man must be left to the conviction and conscience of every man; and it is the right of every man to exercise it as these may dictate.’ Please join me and fellow Catholics as we pray for a new birth of freedom in our great land.”

The Rev. Fred Daley, pastor of All Saints Catholic Church in Syracuse, plans to be at the protest today outside the cathedral, along with his parishioners. Cunningham’s concerns seem more political than religious, he said.

“What is of the most concern to me is that the bishop’s approach to this, at this time, in an election year, gives the perception of being very, very partisan,” Daley said. “That’s very, very serious.”

Daley, who came out several years ago as a gay, celibate priest, said the statistics are clear that most Catholics don’t agree with the church’s teaching on birth control. It rings hollow to build a debate about religious freedom around that issue, Daley said.

Catholics who are not also Republican are unlikely to see the provisions in the Obama health care plan as an erosion of their religious freedom, said Matthew Loveland, a religion professor at LeMoyne College.

“There are moderate and more progressive Catholics who see this as an unwelcome mixture of religion and politics,” Loveland said in an email. He said the push is one more thing that will make those Catholics feel like the church is moving away from them and their values.

Loveland said recent data shows that Catholics are a little bit more likely than the general public to think that Catholic organizations should be given an exemption to the birth control coverage mandate. The country as a whole is about evenly split, he said, but recent data from a Pew poll showed that 55 percent of Catholics think Catholic organizations should not have to provide coverage.

Cunningham said he doesn’t consider his position political and he would never tell people how to cast their votes in November.